Six years and 10 energy-efficient schools later, Montana’s Fuel for Schools and Beyond program is in danger of running out of funding.
The six-state Fuel for Schools and Beyond started up in 2003 to promote the use of wood biomass as a clean energy source in private and public buildings, with an emphasis on schools. To date, 15 biomass boilers have been installed through the program, 10 of which are in western Montana, including ones in Glacier and Eureka high schools.
A project is underway to install one at the Montana State Prison in Deer Lodge, and more than 20 other pre-feasibility assessments have been completed statewide. The other five states in the program are North Dakota, Wyoming, Idaho, Utah and Nevada.
But federal funding for the program has dried up and in Montana the most recent Legislature opted not to renew a one-time appropriation from the previous session. Angela Farr, the state’s Fuel for Schools director, said Montana’s program is operating on carryover federal money and will run out within the next two years. The state money is gone.
In Montana, Fuel for Schools is a partnership between the Department of Natural Resources and Conservation, the U.S. Forest Service, private forestry companies and Bitter Root Resource Conservation and Development.
“If we’re going to keep the program going beyond two years from now, we’re going to certainly need to find some more support,” Farr said last week.
Fuel for Schools uses waste wood, which would otherwise be burned in slash piles or taken to the landfill, as a fuel source in boilers. Much of it comes from branches and brush leftover from logging operations.
“Our program’s hope and intent is that we try to get material utilized that would otherwise be burned in a slash pile somewhere else,” Farr said.
The wood is either put through a grinder or a chipper, though in Montana grinders are most common because this type of “hog fuel” is used by Smurfit-Stone’s cardboard plant in Frenchtown, the largest consumer of biomass energy in the state. Wood recycling companies gear their equipment toward Smurfit-Stone’s needs, though boiler operators – including at Glacier – have had problems with burning hog fuel.
After being ground, hog fuel can be stringy. Woodchips from chippers, however, burn more efficiently and leave fewer “clinkers,” Farr said.
“That has been one challenge that some of our facilities have had,” Farr said.
The first school district to install a biomass boiler through Fuel for Schools was Darby and the most recent was Deer Lodge Elementary School, Farr said. Other districts include Dillon, Troy, Townsend and Thompson Falls. The five towns outside of Montana with boilers through the program are Kellogg and Council in Idaho, Carson City and Ely in Nevada, and Bismarck.
Throughout its three years of operation, Glacier High School’s boiler has used hog fuel provided by Flathead Wood Recycling, a subsidiary of T.B. Gray Inc. Using a $325,000 grinder, employees at the company’s wood-recycling yard near the county landfill grind up waste wood into large piles that are then transported to Glacier.
In a story from last fall, Chuck Cassidy, transportation and facilities director for Kalispell School District 5, said a report showed that it cost $87,000 to heat Glacier in the 2007-2008 school year, while the district spent $206,000 at Flathead High. Glacier’s heating bill is a combination of biomass and natural gas, while Flathead’s is strictly natural gas.
Farr said some money has trickled in from private donations, but not enough to buoy the entire program in Montana. One hope, she said, is a provision in the Farm Bill that could provide funding for Fuel for Schools.
“We have a lot of people working on that,” Farr said.